Iraq: The great cover-up

You get a sense of the scale of lying from [Peter Hain]'s latest letter to the NS (15 January), in which he claimed that "about $16bn of humanitarian relief was available to the Iraqi people last year". Quoting UN documents, Hans von Sponeck replies in this issue (page 37) that the figure was actually for four years and that, after reparations are paid to Kuwait and the oil companies, Iraq is left with just $100 a year with which to keep one human being alive.